Part 5

Martin was sitting out by the balcony railing with Henrik Rissler. They listened to the music, looked out across the terraces, and said little. Henrik Rissler had a smooth white forehead and calm limpid eyes. His glance was long and questing; it seemed to slip over the objects nearest it in order more quickly to reach those farther off. He was the only one of Martin’s comrades who had sought his company outside of school. They used to go to each other’s homes in the afternoon to talk and smoke cigarettes, and once in a while they had gone on long walks together, often in rain, snow, or wind, out to the park or through the suburbs, talking the while of everything that concerns young men, of girls and God and the immortality of the soul. Or they would go into the gas-lighted streets with the sensation of throwing themselves into the turmoil of the world, would stand in front of etchings in book-shop windows, where they admired beyond everything a lithograph entitled «Don Juan in Hades» with a motto from Baudelaire:

The hero all the while, half leaning on his sword, Gazed at the vessel’s wake and deigned not to look up.

This picture excited their imagination, their hearts beat more quickly when in the current of humanity they brushed elbows with a pretty girl, and they believed they were living through an entire adventure every time an old painted professional threw them an ardent glance.

But the original cause of their friendship was that they had both read Jacobsen’s novel, _Niels Lyhne_, and loved it more than other books.

Inside the house the others were talking and laughing around the punch-bowls, forming themselves into groups and coteries. Most of them grouped themselves after their old custom according to social and intellectual similarities and differences, which even on the school benches had united some and separated them from others; Gabel and Billfelt, Jansson and Moberg, Planius and Tullman. Others went about somewhat morosely and talked about all keeping together.

Josef Marin rapped on a bowl and called for a toast «to the ontological proof.» It was drunk with rather half-hearted acclaim. Everyone was so tired of school matters that it didn’t seem worth the trouble even to make fun of them.

Josef Marin was to be a clergyman, but he was still not quite settled in his faith.

The music played student songs, «Stand Strong!» and «Here’s to Happy Student Days!» Dusk began to fall over the tops of the trees, over the roofs and chimneys of the city and the heights of the southern mountains, the pallid dusk of spring twilight, which rarefies and uplifts all things, making them hover with the unreality of a dream world. The crowd, who were clinking glasses and drinking down on the terrace and who a little while ago could still be clearly divided into their component parts as lieutenants and students, guardsmen and girls, and townsfolk with their wives and children, had now melted together in the dusk into an indefinite mass. As though by an inexplicable caprice the murmur suddenly became silent, so that for the moment one could hear the plash of the water in the fountain and the last sleepy bird-notes from the trees. And in the west already flamed a solitary and mighty star.

«Look at Venus,» said Henrik; «how she glitters!»

Martin sat contemplatively drawing on the table, and the strokes under his hand formed themselves into a woman’s arms and breast.

«Tell me,» he asked suddenly--he felt that he was blushing--«tell me, do you think it’s possible for a man to live chaste till real happiness in love comes to him? That’s surely what one would wish. To be with women whom one has no feeling for, who belong to another class, who have dirty linen and use ugly words and only think about being paid--that must be loathsome.»

Henrik Rissler too became a little red.

«It’s possible,» he said; «yes, for some it’s always possible. People are so different. But I know this much of myself, that it will hardly be possible for me. Then at least the great love mustn’t keep me waiting much longer.»

They sat silent and gazed at the star, which glittered ever more brightly in the darkening blue.

«Venus,» Martin murmured, «Venus. She’s a great and beautiful star. But I don’t see why she should have a name. Anyhow, she doesn’t come when she’s invoked.»

Martin suddenly heard a strange voice behind his chair.

«Very true,» said the voice, «very true. She doesn’t come when she’s invoked. An equally mournful and accurate observation!»

Martin turned in surprise. The stranger was a man carelessly dressed, with a student cap, a pale narrow face and black mustaches which hung down over his mouth so that it wasn’t easy to see whether he smiled or was serious. His face looked oldish for the white cap, and it was not entirely clean.

One of Martin’s companions stood beside him and made the introduction, «Doctor Markel.»

Doctor Markel had come there with an older brother of Billfelt’s. They had come from Upsala that day, eaten dinner at Hasselbacken, and then invited themselves to share the student supper. The elder Billfelt was giving a talk inside at the moment. Martin heard something about «Upsala» and «alma mater.»

Doctor Markel sat down beside Henrik and Martin without further ceremony.

«Two young poets, eh?» he asked. «I venture to assume so, since the gentlemen sit here by themselves apart from the vulgar throng and talk about the stars. May I ask what your attitude toward life is? Do you believe in God?»

Henrik Rissler looked at the stranger in surprise, and Martin shook his head.

Doctor Markel looked entirely serious, except that there was a slight mist over his eyes, which were large and mournful.

Some of the others had come up and were now listening to the conversation. Planius and Tullman presented the same docile countenances with which they had listened in class to the exposition of the instructor. Gabel simpered sarcastically with his fine aristocratic face, and behind him Josef Marin pressed up. Josef Marin was short and slight; he looked pale and overworked. The two or three glasses of punch he had drunk had already made him a bit convivial; but now when he heard a serious question proposed and could not see that there was any joke behind it, he broke in with all the earnestness he could summon up at the moment: «I believe in God. But I don’t conceive Him as a personal being.»

Doctor Markel seemed pleasantly surprised.

«Oh, you are a pantheist, charming! That’s what you must be too»--he turned to Martin--«you who are studying to be a poet. For poets and those who want to seduce girls--and that all poets wish--I cannot sufficiently recommend the pantheistic conception. Nothing can be more suited for turning the head of a young girl than the pantheistic rhapsodizing with which Faust answers Gretchen’s simple question, ‹Do you believe in God?› If he had answered as simply and unaffectedly as she asked, ‹No, my child, I don’t believe in God,› you may be sure the girl would have crossed herself, run home to her quiet chamber, and turned the key twice in the lock. Instead he answers that he both believes and disbelieves--which gives the impression of deep spiritual conflict--and that God is really a name for the feeling that two lovers have when they lie in the same bed. This he says with much feeling and in beautiful language, so that it does not shock her modesty; on the contrary, she thinks he talks like a priest, and the rest we know---- And for a poet---- But first allow me as an elder student....»

With easy familiarity Doctor Markel drank brotherhood with all who were within range and then continued:

«For a poet, pantheism is a pure godsend, a regular gold-mine. If he is a churchman, he will be given the Order of Charles XIII and a good income, but will only be read by missies and be ridiculed by the liberal papers, which have the largest circulation. If he is an atheist, he will be considered a shallow and superficial fellow, a poor sort, and he will have a hard time to borrow money. No, a poet should believe in God, but in a god who is out of the ordinary run, something not yet existent, never before shown in any circus, that one can never really get hold of, for then the game would be up. The pantheistic god is exactly the raw material needed for such a being. That is the ideal for a god. Each and every one can carve him to his own taste, he is never without humor, he never punishes and of course never rewards either, he takes the whole show easily, which comes from the fact that he lacks a small characteristic that even the simplest of the town rowdies possesses to some extent: namely, personality. That’s just the choice thing about him. To a personal god one must stand in a personal relation; that is, one must become a religionist. To be a religionist is excellent if one has just come out of Langholm jail and needs to be rehabilitated in society. Otherwise it is unnecessary. You see my drift, gentlemen: to stick to a personal god entails a lot of unnecessary trouble, to be without a god entirely is ticklish. Therefore one must have an impersonal god. Such a god sets the imagination going and comes out finely in poetry without in return entailing any obligation. With such a god one will be regarded by cultured circles as a person of noble and enlightened thought and may become pretty nearly anything from an archbishop to the editor of a radical newspaper.

«In formal style this god may be called the Allfather, in common speech the Lord. As a matter of fact he doesn’t need any name, it is with him as with that star off there: no matter how one calls him, he won’t come.»

The gesture with which Doctor Markel sought and, as it were, beckoned to the star met only a dark and sullen firmament, for great clouds had gathered, the star was gone, it had grown dusky as an autumn evening, and some big raindrops now began to fall on the railing.

Doctor Markel’s lecture was not well received. Josef Marin, who had been drinking more punch meanwhile and had become even paler than before, muttered something to the effect that he ought to have a smack on the jaw. The others got up in groups and discussed whether they should go home.

The elder Billfelt took in the situation, rang for the waiter and ordered champagne. He raised his glass and returned thanks in well-rounded periods for the cordiality with which he and his friend, Doctor Markel, representatives of Upsala and alma mater, had been received by the future alumni. He then paid for the champagne and went off with Markel.

«Your brother is a gentleman,» said Gabel to Billfelt.

* * * * *

It rained as if the heavens were opened. They crowded into a street car to go into the city and have coffee. Most of them voted to go to the Hamburg Bourse.

Martin, who had always believed the Hamburg Bourse was a place where the German merchants of Stockholm assembled to do business, found himself to his surprise entering a café that seemed to irradiate a fabulous magnificence. Here and there on the couches sat some of his former teachers and a lot of oldsters who lifted their glasses and nodded genially.

Coffee and liqueurs were brought in. There was talk of future plans. Most of them were to study law and expected to spend the summer in reading up. Enthusiasm rose, and rash promises were made to keep in touch and not forget each other. At one end of the table Gabel and Billfelt swore eternal friendship; at the other Jansson expatiated on his feeling for Moberg. It was only with difficulty that Josef Marin could be restrained from prophesying. When Josef Marin prophesied he would read out long rigmaroles of stuff, marriage announcements from the _Daily News_ mixed with bits from Tegnér’s _Svea_ and Norbeck’s _Theology_, all recited in the solemn monotone with which he imagined Elisha had chastised Ahab, and Ezekiel foretold the destruction of Israel and Judah. It was one o’clock, getting on towards two, and various members of the party had already said good night and gone off, especially those who seriously meant to read up for law. The crowd was thinning, the electric light had long ago been turned off, only a couple of gas jets were still burning, and the waiters stood with the air of martyrs as they yearned for sleep and _pourboire_. There was nothing to do but break up.

Outside, the glimmer of dawn had already begun to spread over the streets and squares. It was no longer raining, but the air felt moist and cold and misty, and through the mist the clock-face of Jacobs church shone like a moon in a comic paper.

It was hard to separate, and the company walked some distance down along the car tracks past the opera house. Out of Lagerlunden came a group of poets and journalists, and Martin looked at them reverently, wondering whether it would ever be vouchsafed him to become one of them. The student caps gleamed white in the night, whereupon moths came fluttering from right and left, slipping their arms under those of the young men and tempting them with promises of the greatest happiness in life, until amid convivial mirth and harmless joking they arrived at Charles XII’s Square, for Josef Marin had the fixed idea that he must prophesy before Charles XII. But while he was prophesying, Gabel caught the prettiest girl around the waist and began to waltz with her around the statue, Moberg followed and trod a measure with an elderly bacchante, and Martin stood with a pounding heart staring at a pale little piece of mischief with eyes as black as charcoal and wondered if he dared go up to her. But while he was wondering, Planius put an arm around her waist and scampered off, and Martin stood alone and watched them whirl about in the mist, pair after pair. But the morning breeze from the south now began to clear the mist, driving it across the river like white smoke, and the cross on St. Katarina’s cupola burned like the morning star in the first rays of the dawn.

A policeman loomed up from down by the docks and gradually came nearer, one of the girls set up a cry of warning, and the crowd dispersed in all directions. A stout nymph took Martin by the arm and went along with him.

«I must hold your arm, ducky,» she said, «or the cop will pull me in. Besides, you might like to come home with me, eh? I’ve a right nice place, you’ll see. I have a big lovely bed and sheets I embroidered myself. I sit and embroider mornings mostly. One must have some fun for oneself, and I can’t stand playing cards with mamma day out and day in like the other girls, and they swear and carry on and act vulgar. I don’t care about that sort of thing; I like nice agreeable boys like you. If you’re real nice and come to me and come often, I’ll embroider you a nightshirt for a keepsake----Oh, you haven’t any money! The hell, you say; that’s another pair of galoshes! Then you must come again when you have some. Just ask for Hulda. But tell me, is it true there’s a girl at Upsala that’s called Charles XII?»

«Not that I know,» answered Martin.

«Well, good-by then»....

It was not quite true that Martin had no money; he still had a few crowns left from the honorarium for a poem published in the _Home Friend_ and had only made the excuse so as not to hurt Hulda’s feelings.

--V--

Martin lay awake a long time, unable to sleep. It was the little pale girl with the black eyes that left him no rest. She had stood there so pale and still and lonely; she had not taken any one’s arm or laughed or chattered like the others. She had surely been seduced and deserted; she perhaps had a little child that would freeze or starve to death if she didn’t get it food and clothes by selling her body. How he would kiss her if he had her in his arms now, how he would caress her and give her the tenderest names, so as to make her forget who she was, a common street-walker, and who he was, a chance customer like all the rest! With whom was she now? With Planius, maybe. What could Planius be to her? He was no better looking than Martin and he was as stupid as a codfish. He had been one of the worst grinds and had only had a plain «graduated» on his certificate. Why should she pick out just him? But she, to be sure, had made no choice; she had just taken the first that came along. Martin understood this and found it quite natural. She had given away her heart and soul and had no longer anything to give but her body, so why should she deny that to any one when it was her profession to sell it and when she had already got as deep in the mire as a human being can get? Yet still, if Martin could meet her and she could get to know him, perhaps she might become fond of him and begin a new life. For her he would give up everything--all his dreams of poetic fame and his future; he would choose some profession in which he could immediately earn her and his upkeep; they would be married and live far away from men in a little house by a lake deep in the woods. They would row among the rushes in a little boat and dream away the hours, they would land on an island and be together there all night, while the stars burned above their heads. He would kiss away all sorrow, all dark memories from her brow, and would be as fond of her little child as if it was his own....

But while Martin let his fancy wander thus, he knew quite clearly at the same time that under all these reveries lay nothing but desire--a young man’s hunger for a woman’s white body. And the further on into the night this lasted, while he lay awake and stared at the gray dawn light trickling in through the blinds, the more bitterly he regretted that he had said no to the other girl, the fat one.

--VI--

When one asks a young man who has just passed his school examinations, «What do you intend to be?» he cannot answer, «A poet.» People would turn away their heads and put their hands over their mouths. He may answer, a lawyer or a painter or a musician, for a man can train himself for all these fields at some public institution, and even in one’s apprenticeship one has a modest place in the community, a profession to follow, one already _is_ something; a student at the university, or a pupil in the art school or the conservatory. It is not much, but still it is always a sop to throw to indiscreet questioners, and a conceivable future to point to in the case of these more kindly disposed. But he who is to become a poet is nothing but a mockery before God and man until he is recognized and famous. He must therefore during all his long prentice years hang a false sign over his door and pretend to be busy at something that people consider respectable.

This Martin realized, he found it perfectly natural and not to be altered, and so when his father asked him what he was to be, he answered not that he meant to become a poet but that he should like to work as an extra in a government office. His father was pleased with this answer, perceiving in it a sign that his son would be as sensible and happy as himself. He had feared that Martin might want to go to Upsala and study æsthetics and he felt within himself that he could not have refused, but he trembled at all the outlay and trouble there would be for a poor father of a family to keep a son at the university. He was therefore delighted with the reply and had nothing to remark except that Martin ought to try to enter not one office but as many as possible. That evening he invited his son to go to Blanch’s café to hear the music and drink toddy.

But the very next day he put the affair in motion, speaking with his acquaintances in various departments and helping Martin to write applications.

--VII--

Martin had to attend upon the chief of the bureau to which he most desired to submit his services at eight o’clock in the morning in a frock coat and white necktie. Cold and hungry, for he had not had time to eat, he went up the steps of a quiet house in a fashionable street and rang at the door of the general director. An attendant in gold braid announced him and opened the door of a dark private room with curtains only half up. Various articles of dress lay scattered about here and there on the chairs, a great green laticlave hung on the mirror, and at the threshold stood a chamber-pot, which he nearly tripped over but checked himself in time and stood there making an awkward bow. In the middle of the room stood a venerable old man in a purple-red satin dressing-gown, gesticulating with a razor, his chin covered with lather. Then out of the red satin and the white lather proceeded a voice, which said: «You have a fine student certificate, young gentleman, but don’t forget that honesty and diligence are and will continue to be the highest requisites in government service. You are accepted and may report tomorrow to begin your duties, if there is anything to do. Above everything, be honest! Good-by.»

Martin assumed that this discourteous injunction was in accord with ancient custom and refused to be daunted. He went to the office of the department, where he was given a place at a table and a thick ledger to inspect. He added up column after column. If the figures came out right, his duty was to put ticks in the margin; if they did not, he was to make notes of the fact. But they always did come out right. Martin gradually came to the conviction that there were never any mistakes in these accounts, and when this conviction became rooted in him, he gave up adding entirely and merely put in ticks. Sometimes he looked up from his real or pretended work and listened to the buzzing of the flies or the rain plashing on the windowpanes, or to the conversation and grumbling of the older men, or to a blind man playing a flute in the yard.

And he said to himself, «So this is life.»

--VIII--

But for Martin this was not life. For him it was a retreat, an asylum in which he had sought repose for a time, which he hoped to make short.

He read and thought. In books and in his own thoughts he searched for what one so often seeks in youth in order to forget in age that one has ever bothered about it: a faith to live by, a star to steer by, a concord in things, a meaning, and a goal.

* * * * *

Martin had been a Christian up to his sixteenth year. It is natural for a child to believe what his elders say is true. He had believed everything and had not doubted, and on Sundays he had gone to church with his parents. If the preacher was a good talker and a charlatan, he felt edified and moved and wished he could become such a preacher; but if it was an honest unassuming minister who preached as well as he could without making any fuss or gesticulations, he generally went to sleep.

But when he was sixteen he was confirmed. Up to then religion had been a detail of school work set side by side with other details; now it became all of a sudden the one essential, that which daily demanded his time and consideration. The question could not be appeased by the thought: «This is just a matter of the emotions,» since it was customary to weep when one «went forward.» It freely developed the claim to be the highest of all, the dominant force in life, the one thing that mattered. And Martin could not escape the discovery that if religion was the truth, then it was right in this claim, the claim to be above everything else, and he must devote all his powers and his whole soul to it; he must become religious. But if it was not the truth, then he must seek the truth wherever he could find it; he must become a free-thinker. The course between, the Christianity of use and custom such as is professed and believed in by the multitude, was to him mere thoughtlessness and conventionality. This was an evasion which seemed natural to him in most of his comrades, but it never occurred to him to think that this was open to him. He stood at the parting of the ways and had to choose.